You’d have thought that releasing one or two devices a year would give Apple plenty of time to iron out any little issues that may arise.

And with such fanfare surrounding the launch and subsequent release of the third generation iPad, surely Apple did as much as possible to keep issues to a minimum.

But users around the world have taken to web forums to complain about their new toy overheating significantly.

The problem so far appears to have only affected a minority of new iPads, but some users have reported that their device heats up so much that an error message is displayed before shutting down.

New iPad Customers Turn Up the Heat

Users have been flooding Apple forums and message boards with complaints about the overheating problem, which some say makes the iPad so hot it’s uncomfortable to hold.

Many users have said the overheating problem becomes especially bad when users play high-quality 3D games on the iPad.

The hundreds of complaints couldn’t be ignored, but the problem has been confirmed by tech website Tweakers. In a stroke of genius the site used a thermal camera to find out just how hot the iPad gets.

Tweakers ran five minutes of benchmark tests with the iPad, and then measured its temperature. The device heated up to 33.6C, more than five degrees hotter than the previous device – the iPad 2. This equates to almost 20% hotter.

Judging from users’ complaints, and the heat tests, it seems that the processor is causing most of the overheating.

It is a very powerful processor, but the problem is an embarrassing one for Apple. We’re not sure it’ll care that much though, the new iPad has already sold more than three million units worldwide.

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